Property
seizures in other countries are considered totalitarian. When they
occur at the hands of the corporate-controlled U.S. government they
are apparently condoned and even facilitated by the courts whose job
it is to reign in this kind of abuse. The monopoly media, including
“conservative” talk radio, is an information filtering
system masquerading as “news.” They habitually conceal
government land grabs and other privatization schemes like the current
controversy in southeastern Colorado. The army is attempting to seize
property, claiming they need extra land to better prepare the troops.
What’s really behind this patriotic-let’s-help-the-troops
endeavor? Call it what they will, land seizure is land seizure and
violates the public trust.

What
is it about Colorado and the military? In 1989, George H. W. Bush’s
administration wanted to store dangerous radioactive waste at the
Pueblo Army Depot but the state wisely objected.[1]
Toxic waste disposal is no longer an unmanageable issue – well-connected
arms manufacturers use it for bombs and bullets – kind of a
double whammy – if the bullets and bombs don’t kill them,
the lethal residue causes widespread cancer and horrific birth defects
for future offspring of those who absorb, inhale or swallow the deadly
dust. The Pentagon and their private contractors suppress the noxious
nature of depleted uranium. Earlier, they didn’t tell troops
about Agent Orange. And the citizens of Anniston, Alabama weren’t
told about PCBs.[2]
There are thousands of such examples. The government consistently
protects corporate profits rather than citizens.

Even
though the Pentagon owns/occupies 31,700,692 acres in the U.S. and
its territories and another 32,408,262 acres in foreign countries
for a total of 64,108,954 acres, they claim to be strapped for a training
area. The Department of Defense Base Structure Report (221 pages)
dated September 30, 2006 (last report available) reveals that the
Pentagon owns 577,519 structures worth over $712 billion situated
on 86 bases in U.S. territories, 823 bases in foreign lands and 4402
military bases and/or military warehouses in the U.S. Their report
boasts – “the Department of Defense remains one of the
world’s largest ‘landlords.’”[3]
As a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, we have
added at least 13 new military bases in the Middle East, ostensibly
for the Global War of Terrorism (GWOT). The U.S. has literally surrounded
Iran. There are about 63 countries with U.S. bases and thousands
of U.S. military personnel (out of about 1.5 million) in 156 countries.[4]

According
to another report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office,
dated April 10, 2008, the army claims they need to restructure and
rebuild which will require at least $190 billion for equipment through
fiscal year 2013.[5]
In 2007 alone, in order of rank, the Pentagon paid the following,
often no-bid contracts: (1) Lockheed Martin Corp. $12,679,523,202;
(2) Boeing Co. $7,300,000,000; (3) Northrop Grumman Corp. $6,821,000,000;
(4) KBR Inc. (a spin-off of Halliburton) $5,517,070,621; (5) Science
Applications International Corp. $4,412,146,628; (6) Raytheon Co.
$4,068,752,346.[6]
Given these massive figures, one would justifiably trust that America
is well-armed, impenetrable and protected.

However,
trust is not a word that one would associate with any government function.
There are “151 current members of Congress” who have personally
invested millions of dollars in companies that have received large
defense contracts. Some of those companies are probably listed above
or in any of the other top 100 companies. This provides some evidence
of why “our representatives” favor corporations; it pays
better and that’s in addition to hefty campaign contributions.[7]

Currently,
the military (all branches) occupies 483,440 acres in Colorado.[8]
Fort Carson, an army post on 137,412 acres of range land located in
southeast Colorado, is considered one of the world's premier locations
to train and prepare soldiers for battle.[9]
The post had a total population of 10,566 in the 2000 U.S. Census
and is located in both Pueblo County and El Paso County, Colorado.
The census also revealed that there were 1,679 households and 1,620
families residing on base. There were 2,663 housing units.[10]
During World War II, the base functioned as a prison camp for non-threatening
German, Italian and Japanese-American citizens whose lands had been
seized.[11]

The
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was previously located
one mile west of Fort Carson at the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center.
NORAD provides selective response to air, missile, and space attacks
over U.S. and Canadian airspace. A faulty system must have failed
miserably on 9/11 because no one was reprimanded or fired for incompetence.
But wait; there was an upgrade in 1987 at a cost of $968 million and
another one by Lockheed in 1993.[12]
Lockheed also received NORAD upgrade contracts in April 1999.[13]
Then after 9/11, the government spent about $700 million to upgrade
the early warning systems at Cheyenne Mountain.[14]
By March 2005, thanks to Lockheed, NORAD had a newly refurbished,
$14-million state-of-the-art control room – NORAD now “includes
a station that receives Federal Aviation Administration data, flight
plans and access to 50 FAA radars and 20 air-traffic control stations.
NORAD can even tune into commercial airline radios and listen to chatter
about unruly passengers.”[15]
On July 28, 2006, it was announced that NORAD would relocate from
Cheyenne Mountain to Peterson Air Force Base, also in Colorado. After
the move, the government awarded another upgrade contract to Lockheed
worth about $800 million.[16]
Meanwhile the levees, the bridges and thousands of America’s
roads are dangerously riddled with deepening pot-holes.

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With
the implementation of the Department of Defense’s Military Housing
Privatization Initiative of 1996,[17] Fort Carson
was selected as the Army’s model for the development of the
privatization initiatives.[18] Privatization
is the process of transferring ownership of resources and land from
the public and private sector to fat-cat corporations who usually
pay no taxes.[19] Congress privatized the people’s
money with the treasonous Federal Reserve Act of 1913, placing the
control of money into the hands of international banking families
who have deliberately debauched our currency. The FED, a private corporation
and a complicit Congress, wishing to retain power and popularity,
have spent America into bankruptcy – paid for by the people’s
labor, land, resources and blood.

On
February 10, 1998, the Defense Department, the enforcement arm of
Wall Street [20] notified Congress that they
were transferring $15.82 million to the Fort Carson Family Housing
Limited Liability Corporation, a division of J. A. Jones, a subsidiary
of Philipp Holzmann AG, a Germany-based construction company that
used concentration camp labor during World War II. The Fort Carson
Family Housing Limited Liability Corporation of Charlotte, N.C. “won”
this whopping contract worth more than $3 billion over the span of
the contract.[21] See how much Philipp Holzmann
AG and others were
gifted just in 1999. Between October 1, 1997 and September 30,
2003, out of $900 billion authorized expenditures, Philipp Holzmann
AG received pentagon contracts amounting to $1,723,275,972. “Half
of all the Defense Department's budget goes out the door of the Pentagon
to private contractors.”[22] Other funds,
25%, apparently cannot
be accounted for.

The
private corporation built 840 new single and multifamily structures
and revitalized existing structures. Rent for these ‘privatized”
units, now paid to the contractor is set at the soldier's Basic Allowance
for Housing (BAH). Philipp Holzmann AG also built and maintains the
roads, day care centers, schools, parks, picnic areas – literally
all the infrastructure. The 50-year contract came with a renewable
option of 25 years.[23] The new and refurbished
housing would provide housing for a total of 2,663 Fort Carson military
families. Additionally, the Department of Defense has other privatization
projects worth billions.[24]

Even
before 9/11, expansion of the military as well as increased corporate
take-over of public military facilities was part of the game plan.
“Since 1997, Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) has directed each
of the Services to develop an installation-level plan to respond to
the growing need for quality affordable housing for military personnel
by the year 2010. The Army's initial plan, completed in September
1998, called for the privatization of about 85,000 Army Family Housing
(AFH) units over 5 years at 43 US locations.” The army’s
billions-of-dollars housing privatization program is known as the
Residential Communities Initiative (RCI) and is worldwide.[25]See
the entire program here, scroll down to view the full implications.

Located
150 miles southeast of Fort Carson is the Piñon Canyon Manuvere
Site (PCMS). The $26 million dollar “purchase” was completed
on September 17, 1983 through the government’s use of eminent
domain. It was opened in the summer of 1985 to provide critical maneuver
lands for larger units.[26] The relocation of
11 landowners who refused to sell required an additional $2 million.
Their land was acquired through the detestable process of condemnation,
aided by the very people who are supposed to make us “secure
in…our “houses.”[27][28]

The
government’s eminent domain power, the Takings Clause (or the
Just Compensation Clause), is part of Fifth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution – …“nor shall private property be taken
for public use without just
compensation.” This clause is not
a positive power grant allotted to the government. Instead, it imposes
a strict limitation on the government. The Constitution was designed
to protect individual rights from an abusive government. The founding
documents clarify that “the government’s only legitimate
power is to secure the rights that are guaranteed to the people.”[29]

Just
compensation means fair market value, moving expenses, and any
“losses incurred while you establish yourself elsewhere.”
“The victim must be ‘made whole’ meaning that he
is economically no worse off as a result of the taking.” For
decades, “public use” meant just that –
use by the public. However, the Takings Clause has been “transformed
and perverted. Today, ‘public use’ means ‘public
benefit.’”[30]

The
eminent domain floodgate of abuses opened early in the twentieth century
with the 1936 New York City Housing Authority v. Muller case
which forever changed American property rights – public use
became public benefit. The court, ignoring private property rights
and apparently biased against the poor, decided that “slum clearance”
was a public benefit. This “sociological experiment” established
an “acceptable means of perverting the Takings Clause.”
This was a “front for violating private property rights to acquire
land for their pet projects.”[31]

This
led to the despotic condemnation process which later enabled the Rockefeller
(one of the Federal Reserve banking families) land grab of a thirteen-block
tract of Manhattan which was unlawfully condemned in order to erect
the World Trade Center Complex. Read
about it here. The Port Authority issued tax exempt bonds which
would completely fund the project.[32] The Port
Authority privatized the Center on July 24, 2001 for a fraction of
its value by leasing it to Larry Silverstein’s private corporation
– lucky for him that he heavily ensured them against terrorist
attacks.[33]

In
1981, General Motors, another wealthy corporation, directed the government
to condemn the 465-acre community of Poletown, a suburb or Detroit,
Michigan so they could build an assembly plant. GM got their plant
while “3,468 people were displaced and had their homes confiscated
by the government. The Constitution’s public use requirement
was intended to protect against just this sort of usurpation.”[34]
One thousand residences, six hundred businesses and numerous churches
were bulldozed.[35]

About
half of the land for The Piñon Canyon Manuvere Site (PCMS)
was seized through the condemnation process. “In 1983 the unwilling
sellers were pretty much on their own, battling to hang on to their
homes. They wrote letters and attended meetings for the procedurally
required Environmental Impact Statement. But in the end they were
just a handful of ranchers, forced to move off of their land by the
power of the United States Army.”[36]

Victims
of eminent domain rarely receive “just compensation” and
often face endless litigation fighting for the constitutional rights
the government is supposed to regularly protect. Private property
abuse is rampant! According to the Castle
Coalition, there were 10,382 governmental attempts to condemn
private property in the last ten years.[37]

Apparently,
because of the money-siphoning (626 billion dollars in 2007) [38]
Global War of Terrorism, the Department of Defense wants to greatly
expand the Piñon Canyon Manuvere Site (PCMS). In June 2007,
the Army released the Phase I map identifying the first 418,000 acres
they want to acquire. “When combined with the current 235,896
acres of training space there, the Piñon Canyon site would
become the Army’s largest training ground.”[39]
The Army indicates that they want as much as 2.5 million acres, the
entire southeast corner of Colorado because it simulates some of the
terrain in Afghanistan and Iraq.[40]

On
May 3, 2007 Governor Bill Ritter signed Colorado House Bill 1069 withdrawing
the state’s consent to the federal government in their quest
to acquire land through eminent domain for their expansion of Piñon
Canyon Manuvere Site (PCMS).[41]

Constitutional
statutes were designed to “protect the citizens against the
abuse of power” by government agents. Unfortunately, a majority
of elected officials have shirked their constitutional, decision-making
responsibilities to highly-paid private contractors, who have taken
over much of the government’s responsibilities. The problem
is, these contractors are not covered by constitutional laws –
therefore they are not culpable. Federal agencies do not exercise
oversight, demand accountability or set performance standards for
federal contractors. Effective Congressional investigations are rarely
convened.[42]

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This
is a much bigger problem than the dedicated ranchers of Colorado.
But for them, it is their life and their livelihood. The next time
you are enjoying a hamburger or a steak (if you can still afford one),
thank a rancher, the government didn’t produce it. If the government
can target Colorado’s ranchers, they can target anyone! Oh and
that land grab – it has nothing to do with training soldiers!
For part two click below.

Deanna Spingola
has been a quilt designer and is the author of two books. She has traveled
extensively teaching and lecturing on her unique methods. She has always
been an avid reader of non-fiction works designed to educate rather than
entertain. She is active in family history research and lectures on that
topic. Currently she is the director of the local Family History Center.
She has a great interest in politics and the direction of current government
policies, particularly as they relate to the Constitution.

Constitutional statutes
were designed to “protect the citizens against the abuse of power”
by government agents. Unfortunately, a majority of elected officials have
shirked their constitutional, decision-making responsibilities to highly-paid
private contractors, who have taken over much of the government’s
responsibilities.